


Born Again

by Phoenixflames12



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Character Death, Family Feels, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-26 22:29:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5022988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflames12/pseuds/Phoenixflames12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After too many years and too many tears, Catharine conceives and delivers at full term.</p><p>Peggy Schuyler should have been a boy. They had prayed for a boy and yet Elizabeth cannot help but think that God is mocking them by giving her Mother another girl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Born Again

**Author's Note:**

> Much love and enjoy x

After too many years and too many tears, Catharine conceives and delivers at full term.

 

Naturally they pray for a boy; a son who will be able to carry the family name and keep the name of Schulyer from falling forgotten; trodden down in the ashes of time and space.

 

The girls are quiet, with even boisterous Angelica with her quick remarks and wicked tongue seeming strangely subdued as they hang around the birthing chamber.

 

Their father has disappeared again; vanished into the hushed, leather soaked darkness of his study. A hushed stream of rapid Dutch can be heard at odd intervals, rising and falling against the wood panelling of the study door. They would listen closer, try to unravel the strange web of secrecy that shrouds their father; but as their governess as told them over and over again; it is wicked to listen at keyholes; wickeder still to keep the secrets they heard behind them.

 

Elizabeth presses herself up against her sister; desperate for the comfort of another’s touch that radiates through the whalebone corsets that they are forced to wear. Her eyes are mysterious honey coloured shutters that at the same time, reveal everything and can hide nothing from her ever-perceptive sister.

 

‘Don’t cry Lizzie’, a finger trembles slightly as Angelica brushes a solitary tear caught on the younger girls’ lashes. But even as she says it, her voice trembles slightly and she cannot help but cast another glance towards the door of their parents chamber; that candlelit haven that has their mother give birth to so many red faced, squalling balls of humanity; so many answered hopes and prayers; only to have their whispered lives whisked away from them in a cloud of blue smoke.

 

‘I’m… I’m not…’

 

Elizabeth knows that it is futile, that she might as well be trying to stop a hurricane as much as stop Angelica from finding out what is troubling her. Angry with herself, she tries to swipe away at her tears, the salt stinging against her cheeks; but knows that it is useless.

 

For that she gets a short jab to the ribs and a reproachful glare from Angelica as they scuttle out of the way of a passing housemaid, who slips them both a piece of ginger biscuit; with a soft, motherly smile. She cannot be older than twenty and yet the sisters cling to the biscuit, cling to the one hope of certainty in this silent, uncertain world.

 

‘Poor mites’, they hear her murmur to herself as the soft, motherly form trapped in the compulsory black stuff dress and corset sways her way down the passage and out of sight.

 

‘We’re not poor, are we ‘gelica?’ The question is spoken before Elizabeth can stop herself, the words caught in the mists of time, utterly irretrievable.

 

‘If Mother gives Father a son, then we don’t have to be poor Lizzie.’ Angelica pulls her sister close; her eyes still fixed on the door; biting her lip.

 

_But what if Mother didn’t give Father a son? What if… What if the baby died; like so many of the others that had floated in and out of their lives with the routine pain of death, or was just another daughter? What would happen then?_

The unspoken fears that crowd around her brain are too terrifying to put into words as she presses her nose into the nape of her sisters’ neck and wishes for it be over. Wishes for the door to open; wishes for the suffocating silence to snap, wishes for the light and love and laughter that she has clung to for so long, to return again.

 

She is about to give up all hope when the door opens, bringing with it a stench of heat and blood; the metallic tang that makes their stomachs roll with pain.

 

‘Mother?’ Angelica’s voice is barely a whisper; a ghost of her confident, carefree self as a maid pushes past them; her apron stained an ominous, rusted scarlet.

 

The woman doesn’t hear them. Her hands are caught in white linen to stop their trembling, her face streaked silver with silent tears.

In the flickering lamplight, Elizabeth can just make out the kneeling figure of a priest by the great marital bed, his crucifix glittering in the dusky shadows. By the window, a midwife stands clutching a bundle of linen where a faint, plaintive wail is rising and falling, caught between ragged, painful gasps for air.

 

‘Mother!’ Lizzie feels Angelica brush past her, fear radiating all too clearly off her older sister, panic making her voice shake.

 

Their mother lies quietly; her face grey with exhaustion; eyes glassy with agony. Sweat glistens in the pit of her throat, bathing her cheekbones, resting in waves against her collarbones.

A wad of linen is between her legs and Lizzie finds that she cannot look at it; cannot take in the stinking, scarlet stain that is slowly seeping across the centre.

 

Angelica is already beside the bed, despite the midwife’s protests, her hands scrabbling for the protection of their mother. The wide, dark eyes drift open, barely focussing as search the gathering gloom.

 

‘Angelica?’ Her voice is low and caught with agony, a the word a groan of a sound that sends knives into Lizzie’s heart as she waits in the shadows, hardly daring to move.

 

‘Mother? Mother, what is it? You’re… You’re not…’

 

The word hangs thickly in the air; Death waiting with silent patience by the door; his gaunt face flickering in and out of focus. Elizabeth knows that he’s there, that something is not as it should be; but still she ignores him; because he is too soon, much too soon and Mother… Mother couldn’t leave them, could she?

 

‘My darling children…’ She hears being whispered; sees Angelica glance over at her, her eyes burning with tears that she refuses to shed.

 

‘Mother… Mother… No… You… You… Can’t…’

 

‘My dearests… I…’ Tentatively, Elizabeth feels herself reaching to brush a lock of hair out of their Mother’s eyes, her fingers flinching at the heat radiating from the usually cool, soft skin.

 

‘You… You have a sister…’

 

_Sister._

_Another daughter._

_Another girl and not the boy, not the precious son that Father wanted, the son that Father had hoped for, prayed for._

_This wasn’t happening._

_This wasn’t happening and Mother wasn’t dying and the baby wasn’t a girl, it was a boy, it had to be boy, Father said…_

‘Call her Peggy,’ their Mother’s voice is barely a breath now; each syllable forced painfully through sweaty, blue stained lips; tears leaking from the eyes that they adored beyond all things.

 

‘We… We will Mother’, Angelica can hardly speak and it is all Elizabeth can do not to run at the bed and curl up beside their Mother; safe and warm and happy within the comfort of her loving arms; curl up beside her as she has done every morning until so very recently when their whole world has changed beyond recognition.

 

At the foot of the bed, the sisters can hear the priest begin to murmur his prayers; murmur useless words that meant nothing now.

 

By the window, the baby lets out a sudden wail; as if keening for the life that it had ended when its own was just beginning.

 

‘ _Peggy’ ,_ Elizabeth finds herself thinking resentfully. _‘Peggy, who should have been a boy. We prayed for a boy, all of us. Not a girl. Not another girl.’_ The resentment continues to gnaw at her, clawing over the red raw wounds of grief.

But then she feels Angelica’s hand creeping into her own and squeezing slightly; dark eyes drawn together that are filled with pain.

 

‘We will love her’, her eldest sister whispers after a moment.

 

‘Will we?’ Elizabeth can hardly dare herself to answer her.

 

‘We promised Mother’, Angelica casts a sudden glance to the door and then fixes her gaze back on Elizabeth.

 

Her eyes shine with unshed tears, the flickering light giving her features a wild, untameable quality that Elizabeth has never seen before.

 

It is a while before she can trust herself to speak. 

It takes even longer for her to trust herself to look at the baby. Look at the squalling scrap of humanity with her oval shaped eyes, the same deep honey-brown as their Mother’s.

 

Peggy, they call her. Peggy, meaning ‘ _pearl’_ in Ancient Greek.

 

At her christening, their father gives her a pearl necklace; an exact replica of the ones he had given Angelica and Elizabeth for theirs; the pearls taken from their Mothers’ wedding dress.

 

Elizabeth often wonders how long it will take her to be able to look at those pearls without thinking of the woman who was once their rightful owner; the woman whose life had collapsed into Deaths’ grip in order for a new one to rise; Phoenix-like from the ashes.

 

* * *

**_Fin_ **

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to read and review!
> 
> Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


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